Were there pics of the engine bay? Did they paint that too?

I used to be into washing and waxing a lot more before I got a house with a yard that I do most maintenance on and a kid.

I'm waiting on him to send me more pictures, I requested some of the bay. He hasn't started it in a while so he is going to put it on a battery tender and start it up to make sure it is able to drive.

He is an old dude from the sound of it so who knows how long it will take him.

Check for rusty or crushed frame rails!

Is that as important with aftermarket frame rail support as mine has? Which I plan on transferring.

It is important, but IMO not as important as long as they aren't flattened or extremely bad. Mine were pretty bad but i was able to massage the frame rails around them. Improved chassis feel a huge amount.

Edit: except for rust. If they are really rusty than the chassis is basically ruined.

Initial evaluation before receipts for the totaled car was quoted at $5,000. They estimated $11,000 to repair the car.

Once I can get them every scrap of receipts I can hopefully I can get a more fair payout on the car. I was planning on doing an independent appraisal of the car but seeing as the car is in pieces...my bad. oh well, my fault for jumping the gun on stripping the car I guess.

If the car is from GJT or vicinity, I doubt there will be any rust. That car for $800 was a smoking deal. Plus, you can sell off some parts, engine, tranny, etc. It might end up being a free car.

So they are talking about offering you $5,000 for your car? How much to buy it back (which you pretty much have to do to take all the old parts off)?

I had a similar thing happen to me years ago, only it was my own stupid fault. I had a 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II Convertible that got totaled in a trailer transport accident. I bought the car originally for $6,500. I put another thousand or two into parts and upgrades. After it was totaled and after about 30k miles and a lot of rust peaking through the paint they totaled it out at $7,500. I bought it back for $800 and parted it out for another $3,500.

All told, i'd rather have had repaired the car and kept it, but the damage was somewhere around $15,000 or so and I didn't have the money to throw at it to make it right.

It looked A LOT like this one: 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II for Sale | ClassicCars.com | CC-373824

Anyhow, I don't mean to derail your story, I just wanted to say I feel your pain. Good luck with everything.

Bummer about the Belvedere. I rock a 383 Sport Fury convertible of the same year. It was my first car -- bought it in 1983 (holy shit, that was 30 years ago!). My old friends always ask whether I still have it. It will go to my grandson eventually.

Check those pbr ultimate pads in the ziplock bsgs, they probably still have 80% life on them

I'm just lucky I caught it 6 hours after he posted the ad. That thing would have disappeared immediately. Hopefully I can sell enough to recoup expenses. We'll see how clean the engine/drivetrain etc etc is.


That is their estimate before they factor in aftermarket parts and labor. I got the letter from DJP with the car receipts today so once I fax the receipts and the parts list to them they will be able to raise the value of the car. State Farm is good about aftermarket parts, one of the few that doesn't have some shitty $1,000 limit on money back from mods.

No worries about derailment. Anyone who has been through this situation knows how shitty it is and how much time and energy it takes to make sure you don't get cheated/taken advantage of.

Buying it back will probably be ~$1,000. Who knows for sure, every company uses a different percentage to determine the buy-back amount.

I'll have to open the bags up and take a look, I didn't see any labels on the outside so I thought you were keeping the pads as trophies or something. :rofl:

Doing a little math on how I made out on this prospectively:

$500 deductible
$800 new shell
$600 in replacement parts/fluids/gaskets/machine work
$520 for Bronze Konig Flatout 15x8
$500 225/45/15 Hankook RS3's
$1,000 buy-back
=$3920 before loss estimate of original car is taken into place. Also before parting out the new shell as well.

So essentially I just got a $7,500 car for roughly $5,000. I win? I think? I feel like I loose, but math doesn't lie.
:party:

It's a win. The car will be more yours. That's what blood and sweat does.

The thing I'm terrified about is wiring. It is one area in car wrenching I have always been a little nervous about.

That and when I put the car back together I get to learn how to use Tunerstudio and Megalog, which opening up the program taught me was a steep hard learning curve.

I feel like I could strip the entire new shell in one night after learning where all the bolts hide and how things are assembled. I'm strangely happy that I was forced to tear the car down to nothing. You don't learn faster than getting your hands dirty, loosing a lot of blood and sweat, and many an annoyed neighbor at my swearing.

Plus these cars are so bloody easy to wrench on comparatively to my VW. You actually have space to inspect something and fit a wrench in the engine bay. You don't have to replace TTY bolts anytime you loosen something, everything is a 10/12/14/16mm bolt, and it doesn't have crazy German engineering in it.

All in all I'm just glad I have a fix it and worry about it later personality. Once initial shock wears off it evolves to lets get the problem fixed and get on with my life. I have had so much shit happen to me(I've broken over 20+ bones) from climbing, biking, and kyaking that there isn't a whole lot that can phase me these days. Granted I'm only 26 and I probably shouldn't say that in fear of a swift karma kick in the ass but...I have seen some shit man.

I'm picking up the car on Sunday. Managed to convince my employee that a crisp $100 bill has his name on it if he would drive out to CO with me and then drive my car back. Luckily the 5 hours won't be too painful since he is a funny Chris Farley look-a-like both in appearance and humor.

Any parts you guys recommend bringing with me in case the car decides it doesn't like the drive home? Going to bring a couple quarts of oil, some radiator fluid, some fuses, impact driver and bolts, spare crush washer for the oil drain bolt, couple hose clamps, and that is about all I can think of that could screw me.

If you have to use math to calculate how loose you are, I think you lose...

Hustler could probably help you decide how loose you actually are.

The double entendre was intended! Hustlers "caliper" of measurement isn't necessary or wanted.:nono:

Driving out to Grand Junction tomorrow at 7am, I hope to be driving back in the afternoon as long as there isn't obvious problems that are being covered up with the fresh paint job.

I just hope it is running decently. He says it runs but wasn't specific on just how well. Which I hope isn't a bad signifier, since the route back to Cedar City is 5 hours of canyons and hills.

... and you have 90 whp on a good day. Enjoy!

I also ordered the correct speedo gear for the 3.63 R&P. Just for anyone wondering what the part numbers are:

1011-17-442A
M502-17-441
9922-20-214
9958-60-8166
1011-17-443

Also a new Moroso catch can since the old one was leaking
949 Racing lug nuts & valve stems
Locking washers and new downpipe bolts

Ended up going with 225/45ZR-15 BFGoodrich g-Force Rival's instead of the RS-3's. Price was about $90 cheaper. From what I have read, they are great tires. Plus they have a $50 rebate on TR at the moment.

Damn it I can't sleep...

Aircraft paint stripper is the shit.

After sanding and then putting some rust converter on, followed by some etching primer.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1422893182

Then some enamel gloss black. It isn't perfect but that isn't the point. Just some added protection.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1422893246

Getting the door bars powder coated wrinkle black. Put some wd-40 on, to keep them from rusting before then.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...103_022247.png

Hopefully I'm high enough to sleep now. Don't get aircraft stripper on your skin....

Did my first track day on Rivals yesterday. They were awesome. Sticky when you want them to be. Very flat at the edge. Easy to rotate the car with throttle or trail braking. I was consuming Corvettes and Mustangs like nobody's business. It was just plain fun.

Hope you make it back OK. That's pretty country you're driving through (but remote).

Glad to hear the tires work great....I like predictability.

It is very pretty country. The drive to CO was great(in my Jetta) the drive back was a different story.
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I can’t describe the past 14 hours because I am so fried I can barely function.

Old man river is what we’ll affectionately call the seller. Talk about your angry old dude. I made a comment about the tires not being “new” and I think I almost got shanked by a lighter(he managed to smoke 8 cigarettes in the 20 minutes I was there).

Dude doesn’t believe in that “clear coat shit” so it supposedly doesn’t have a clear coat on it. Paint actually feels and looks solid though. I believe the only problem with it is scale build up due to it not being used/washed.

Luckily the body looked better in person then in the pictures. No problems, no bondo.

Interior needs some loving. Dash is cracked, tombstone is cracked, center console is cracked…but interior doesn’t matter since the interior from mine is in perfect shape and didn’t get damaged.

Idle issues were a big problem until I tore the throttle body cable, and mechanical AFR sensor in the intake apart and cleaned them up. Then it idled no problem. The mechanical AFR on the 1.6 is a finicky little bitch. Took a lot of back and forth to get everything right.

5 speed is perfect. No slipping, no grinding, no bouncing, and no vagueness. Should sell well.

Engine pulled really strong after I fixed the throttle idle issues. Saying that, the 1.6 engine is a piece of shit. No power, hills were painful, and I have never seen a speedo tach move slower in my life. The sweet spot is like 10% throttle, any more and you are wasting gas.

The body is good but the rest of the suspension is shit, or at least the struts/springs are. I have never been more scared driving a car in my life. Alignment was so far out it felt like I was driving on washboard roads. The struts and springs were shot. The tires needed a shot of tire sealant in them since they had a slow leak.

Everything was going fine until I was 20 miles away from my parents house and the temp gauge shot to hot, the battery charge light came on and the car wasn’t liking life too much. Pulled over right as the coolant blew the radiator cap off. After waiting an hour for AAA I’m home. Guessing the alternator died which killed the fans, and @80mph was just too much for the ol' girl.

What an epic adventure. Worth it for the clean shell and B+ paint. My buddy can wet sand and clear coat it for dirt cheap if need be.

Never want to drive a mechanically doomed car like that again. Ready to pull this shit and get the shell nice and tidy before I put any parts on it.

I probably could have backed out easy but I just wanted it to be over with. Panels are dent free and the paint is acceptable, and will be passing for new once I break out my orbital buffer.

Once all the parts start streaming in I can really start making a rebuild out of this.

Scariest part is when it started to snow and the roads were freezing up. Back end slid out a couple times and really woke me up. Forecast didn’t call for snow until Tuesday but that is Utah for you! I held a constant 40mph for 1.5 hours since I was so scared of crashing it and ruining all the hard work.

*edit* did a prep panel on the paint with a clay wipe, Menzerna 400&4000, and a little spray wax. Not too bad. No paint transfer to the pads either. Doesn't look like a quality spray gun was used because I see occasional globs like a spray can was used in certain areas. Easily fixed once we wet sand it though.

look at the light clustering and feathering in these pictures. 1st is post buffing, second is original after clay bar wipe.


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383552236
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383552236
Post trunk buffer
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383552236

Passenger side

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383552236

Small dent in rocker
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383552236

This picture makes it look like a lot of weird dents and bumps but it is just the lighting
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383552236

The alternator failing won't cause it to over heat. You're perfectly describing the alternator belt breaking, but not the alternator itself not working. If it's not enough power to spin the fans, it's not enough to keep the engine running.

Also, something to know about miata coolant gauges: They sit at high noon from something like 180* to 220*, without moving. So when it does shoot up, you know you have a serious problem, not just a small change.

+1 on what Curly said. Def alternator/waterpump belt that failed. Also 90-93 were single stage (no clear coat) paintjobs from the factory - so maybe it was re-pained using OEM single stage or similar? Looks a bit orange peel-ie, but should sand/buf up well.

Look like a MUCH better shell than some of the others you were considering. Bravo. Lets see this thing get tossed back together now!

Yeah, sounds like the water pump drive belt broke, but I'd assume you would see that pretty easily.

Solid shell. Used to live and work in Idaho. I remember making the drive over the divide in an unboosted 1.6. Doesn't make a lot of power above 10K'. LOL.

Strangely enough none of the belts are broken, I'm guessing it was slipping quite bad.

Yeah the orange peel is easy enough to deal with. Just patience and a large block sander with 2000 grit.

I remember trying to go over the divide in my old Subaru Outback H6...no thank you. I love going over it in my TDI though. Just leave cruise control on in 6th gear and roll right on up it. Diesel and 330+ tq FTW!

Where did you live in Idaho? I was in Twin Falls for 4 years. Loved it there. I'm glad Idaho has a stigma of a bad place to live, it leaves all the great outdoors open to us who know about it!

Lived/worked in Boise.

Also Curly, since the default gauge seems to not be to accurate, is it mostly recommended to get an aftermarket digital gauge for oil pressure?

Can't decide If I want to keep the gauges in the A-pillar or move them to a double din blank. The nice thing about the A-pillar is the information is in your face so it is easy to keep track. But I have always hated the look since little ricer Hondas always had them.

My pod gauges are a little ricey, and are annoying for left turns. More then you'd think.

Oil pressure gauge is great. I'm referring to the coolant gauge. If you have a '94+, the oil pressure gauge is a dummy gauge as well. Straight up for good, down for low. Later replaced by an on/off light. Swap the gauge and pressure sensor from a 90-93 and you've got yourself a good gauge

+1. If you plan to track the car, give yourself as much out-the-windshield visibility as you can. Look at Crusher for example. No pod gauges there.

Even if you're street driving, what is that pod covering up?

Drag racing? Well, OK, pod away.

Nice to see it coming together. I would change the gauge location. It works well because it is at eye level, but on left hand turns it can feel like it obstructs the line of site too much. My 2 cents.

I'm still following along, but with only a cell phone for web surfing I don't surf nest as much.

The op sensor on that engine is from the 93

Reorganized the garage to get parts out of the way.

Patients prepped for surgery.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383615252

This is much easier the second time around. Just need to pull the firewall wiring out. Engine/transmission/subframe/misc hardware.

Probably going to strip everything(including gas tank), wheel it out to the driveway, soak it in degreaser, and start really really clean.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383659862

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383659862

Dang you work fast...

Also, what are people using to plug the AC hard line holes? Just a shit load of epoxy?

The gas tank cover and the gas filling hose covers had decent rust on them so I'm switching my old ones over. This was definitely an outside only car. I probably vacuumed about 20 lbs of dirt out of it. The padding under the carpet is a bitch. I'm guessing a vat of goo-gone? Purple Power will probably have the same effect though.

On the rubber sound deadening in the trunk...dry ice or heat?

Also I found out why the car died. The bottom pulley bolt was hand tight...I was laughing so hard.

Also...power steering fluid is nasty shit.

It helps being single, self-employed, and the GF being in Chicago...:rofl:

So, hard work and cold showers. I get it.

BTW, are Miata guys allowed to have GF's?

Looks like a really solid shell though. Love the brake fluid color. I'm guessing it's NOT blue racing fluid.

As stripped down as you are, you could just pull out the evaporator and replace it with the OEM flex tube. Rosenthal sells that. Then just patch the holes.

If you're referring to the firewall, we use OEM rubber plugs, the size and part number are floating around here somewhere.

If you're referring to the blower box, you can either use foil tape to patch them, or buy the smaller and lighter non-ac cross over tube.

If your car died from a loose pulley, the crank, pulley, cog, and key are most likely fubared. Make sure to advertise that or inspect it before trying to sell. 1.6s go for dirt cheap anyways, maximum about $300 in decent 60-100k mile condition.

The rubber trunk gunk in the earlier 90-91 cars can be easily scraped off with a good 1-1.5" puddy knife. My '93 was definitely caked on more than the two earlier cars I've worked on, and required a torch and knife. Have a plastic container, torch, and puddy knife in the trunk, go at it bit by bit, heating, scraping, and scraping off into the box, vacuuming the small stuff out of your way occasionally. Once you get down towards the end, I used a wire wheel to get the rest, and vacuumed out all the final debris.

Also I'm not sure if you've done anything to the carpet sets, but 90-93's have excellent carpet, don't be throwing those away! I'm kicking myself for not picking up the decent set I saw at pick-n-pull for $36 this summer.

Pulling the wire harness proved harder than I thought it would. But I won in the end.

Gave me a good idea of what I can delete and not delete.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383704416

When deleting cables, can you just snip the ends or is it wiser to trace it back to the source? I just don't want to unravel the entire harness for power steering/AC/Radio.

Also is there an easier way to remove the plastic clips from the body? Maybe my needle nose pliers aren't skinny enough but I broke almost half of them.

Any good alternate tie down solutions? I'm honestly thinking of just using electrical tap and a little shoe goo(flexible rubber glue).

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383707035

Sadly yes. Should have know better than to date an actress, always gone. We are allowed to have GF's, even better when said GF doesn't laugh at your car choices(Jetta and Miata) I should be a hairdresser or a valley girl by those two car standards.

I saw the brake fluid and laughed as well. Oil filter was barely tight at all. Got out my filter wrench and went hulk mode to get it off and almost broke my hand since it spun freely.

The 5 speeds oil drain bolt is stripped all to hell, that'll be a fun mess to clean up when I pull the engine...:vash2:

Bam. These 1.6/5speeds are so easy to pull.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383712563

Ok no more updates on the actual shell for the next couple days. Need to catch up on some work.

Strangely almost all my orders are arriving tomorrow so I should have some shiny bits to show off. The machine shop also called and said the parts were done. Said the surfaces were really bad. Very warped and took a lot of work to get flush.

Shell is done except for weatherstripping and the gas tank, which I'm not sure if I will pull or not. The one from my old car is much newer, so to avoid issues like rust or some bad juju I may just pull it and replace.

I'm conflicted with the paint though. The more parts I took off the worse it seemed to get. Very Very bad overspray. Since the shell is almost completely stripped I've considered getting a vinyl wrap or just repainting it. We'll see what the budget allows.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383731833

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383731833

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383731833

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383731833

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383731833

If you've stripped this far, it would be a shame not to respray. At the rate you work, I would expect you to have completed the prep and respray by 4PM today. After that, I'm going to bring you some of my projects to work on. You need to speed it up bro.

I probably shouldn't have stripped it so far but I figure do it once do it right.

Isn't most of the cost of painting the prep work I.E doing what I just did?

Move to Southern Utah and I'll give you all the help you need. I'm strangely enjoying this.

Correct. Actually spraying the paint doesn't cost that much. Look at what Maaco charges. What separates the Maaco job from the $10K job is what you are doing.

You're almost stripped down to the point of being able to do an OEM paint job. All you need to do is sand the car down and fix any little dings you find. From the shot in the engine compartment and under the car, looks super-solid. Your frame rails look great.

Your car's going to be awesome.

Turbo parts are back from the machine shop. He said the burn in was pretty bad on a couple of them so he could only do so much without removing too much material.

The cross hatching is overly emphasized by my camera's macro mode.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383783219

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383783219

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383783219

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383783219

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383783219

New lube, never fun to go in dry.
New maintenance parts for the transmission.
949 Racing lugnuts/valve stems. Emilio's products are impressive, I'm almost scared to apply torque to them in fear of scratching them up.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383783219

Hot damn these tires are solid. Rivals sidewalls are stiff as shit!

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1383783219

I'm really not liking that machine work. Those flanges look mediocre at best and look like they were belt sanded and not machined. the manifold to head flange is the one that looks the worst and would kinda alarm me. at least based from those pictures.

maybe its just the pictures. I dunno

The manifold to head flange he merely cleaned up, he didn't do much besides remove a little oxidation. Said the surface was already really flat to begin with.

Question on the final "sanding" then. should it be mirror smooth or a little rough to the touch?

I think the macro settings and the little bit of photoshop tweaking makes it look worse than it really is...I hope.

I can't find my spark plug gap feelers otherwise I'd test it, but after I bolted it together to test it looks like all the surfaces mate up very flush, at least they weren't rocking back and forth and there was no noticeable gap anywhere.

the machining looks great to me, its definitely better than it was in either case. i personally would have deburred and chamfered the holes a bit.

I amazed at how fast this has happened.

Just remember that the ms3 is using some of the stock wiring harness. There is an excel file on the disk that lists what was connected where on the stock harness. One thing I would change. The iar sensor is connected via the old fm method at the mat sensor wiring. If you get a mat sensoe connector you could make a harness, or just clip the connector and write directly using the mat sensor wire. to iat

I want it running by the end of the month, so I'm hoping this hurried pace will help pad that goal a little bit. Plus I hate seeing your old car in bad shape.

I am going to have to research that a little Dave, wiring is my weak spot unfortunately.

What is everyone's thoughts on brushing POR15 w/UV coating on the interior, trunk, and engine bay? Worth it or going overboard?

In u tah it might be worth it if three car is going to be outside or be driven a lot in the rain. It probably is overkill, but with the car torn down like this already id spray it something. I was thinkingspreading the under carriage . If already the inside with some kinda rhino liner.

I think it's going way overboard. Keep it light and simple. If you were going to delete the carpet "because racecar," then some rhino liner on wear spots would make sense.

Ever been to Utah Dave? Believer or not, even less rust/corrosion than Alabama.

Having done 2 full frame off restos with por15, I would advise against it. It's a fantastic product that turns out great, but requires an insane amount of proper pep work to do it right. it's expensive compared to other products, but you get what you pay for.

This. Come over to my place and get some of my work done. I'd like a motor swap and some other things done by tomorrow.

By the time he asks a question on here the work is already done. :giggle:

I'm getting a streak of laziness and am considering vinyl wrapping it from a detailer I've done a lot of work with in the past.

Thing is. I hate painting...always have! Always very messy and time consuming and usually doesn't turn out perfect(at least for me). And prep a shit load of time even with a random orbital polisher.